To facilitate the design and manufacturing process, it may be desirable to employ a modular architecture in which various components are implemented as discrete devices that may be incorporated into an overall system. For example, separate radio frequency (RF) components such as wireless local area network (WLAN) modules, Bluetooth modules, telecommunication network modules and modules for other radio access technologies (RATs) may be provided as separate integrated circuits (ICs) or other packages which are then attached to a motherboard. In particular, it may be desirable to design such RF components so that they may be soldered onto the motherboard to reduce cost and size. In such designs, the antenna may be integrated into the motherboard or a connection to separate antenna element(s) may be provided via the motherboard, so that the associated RF component may be coupled to the antenna.
As will be appreciated, the impedance of an RF component is preferably matched to its associated antenna to provide efficient operation. Typically, a dedicated antenna tuning circuit may be employed to achieve the desired control impedance to match the RF component to the antenna. While a fixed tuning circuit may be included in the RF component to provide a specified impedance, the design of the motherboard and the associated antenna elements may require an additional antenna tuning circuit on the host motherboard to achieve an adequate match between the RF component and the antenna element on the host motherboard. In particular, solder-down implementations may involve deviations relative to the designed impedance due to the soldered connection to the antenna and manufacturing variances, including the stack up of the motherboard and antenna trace width and length discrepancies. Accordingly, to minimize impedance mismatch, it may be necessary to customize an additional antenna tuning circuit on the motherboard. As will be appreciated, this represents a significant cost and complication in the manufacturing process.
Accordingly, it would be desirable to provide a tuning circuit configured to correct mismatches due to manufacturing variances. It would also be desirable to provide a tuning circuit that facilitates regulatory compliance. This invention accomplishes these and other goals.